An archive of letters to and from Ted Kaczynski, the “Unabomber,” were released Monday, revealing that he preferred Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election.
Kaczynski has been in federal penitentiary since his 1998 conviction, and has penned hundreds of letters to lovers and haters alike. The Labadie Collection at University of Michigan’s Library has been collecting an archive of these writings, which currently fill up 90 boxes.
In an April 2009 letter to a pen pal, the “Unabomber” explained his preference in the 2008 presidential election. “I at first favored Hillary Clinton for president, but after she was out of the picture I favored Obama. I mean, I don’t think any of our politicians are worth a damn, so when I say I ‘favor’ a politician for office, I just mean that I think he or she is the least of the available evils.”
Because of his felon status, Kaczynski could not vote in the 2008 election. He said he supported Democrats because he believed they would be more likely than Republicans to appoint Supreme Court justices respectful of constitutional rights.
Kaczynski, though, opposed President Obama appointing Eric Holder to be attorney general and Elena Kagan to be solicitor general in 2009. Holder stepped down as attorney general in 2015. Kagan is now a Supreme Court justice.
“But now I’m afraid Obama is going to be a big disappointment in [respecting constitutional rights]. The people he has appointed as Attorney General and Solicitor General both say they think the government should be able to hold alleged terrorists without trial,” he wrote in the 2009 letter. “Of course, the government can claim that anyone is a terrorist, and if there is no trial that claim is never tested.”
The convicted terrorist became fascinated with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida after 9/11. Kaczynski had on one occasion attempted to blow up a plane in Chicago, but failed. He wrote in his diary “bomb too weak.” The “Unabomber” in letters soon after the Sept. 11 attacks believed that while people saw Bin Laden as an opponent of modernity he didn’t sympathize with him.
“If he were simply that, I might be inclined to support him, but my guess is that his motive is less an opposition to modernity than a desire to create an Islamic ‘great power’ that would be able to compete on equal terms with other great powers of the world. If that is true, then he is just another ruthless and power-hungry politician, and I have no use for him,” wrote Kaczynski.
He was also critical of the culture of Islam, writing that the technology he so despises couldn’t flourish there. “Even if the leaders were to drop all resistance to modernizing social changes, creation of a fully-developed and efficient industria[l] economy in the Middle East still would be exceedingly slow and difficult, because the culture isn’t amenable to it and won’t change easily.”
Yahoo News says it will be making more of his letters public throughout the week.